Self signed certificate being flagged as a error.

[Ernie Luzar]

To create my self signed certificate & key I followed this online how-to.
The how-to provides a CA script for download.

.     
http://www.freebsdmadeeasy.com/tutorials/freebsd/create-a-ca-with-openssl.php 

followed by the first 2 openssl commands on this page
     
http://www.freebsdmadeeasy.com/tutorials/web-server/apache-ssl-certs.php

Then I did this command using the certificate outputted  by the  above 
openssl verify cacert.pem

cacert.pem: C =US, ST = PA, L = Pittsburgh, CN  =  *.powerman.com
error 18 at 0 depth lookup:self signed certificate
ok

Why does openssl think this is a error and how can I fix this so it will 
work?